Contents

A note on account creation

By default, account creation is disabled. If you wish to become a contributing member of this wiki, you may request an account here. Note that the wiki is under constant scrutiny, and that accounts which are not considered to be following our basic rules, will be disabled swiftly!

Your friends: the top left links

The top left links are your friends.

The "discussion" link will lead to a page where you can discuss the current content of an article. Use this if you disagree with (parts of) the article's current content, or if you want to add/edit content but are not sure whether it is appropriate. Consider the discussion link a place for "meta-talk".

The "edit" link will allow you to edit the article itself - or even create it, in case there was nothing there posted before your addition.

Naming conventions

This is of the utmost importance. If there's no consensus on naming conventions we are going to find ourselves in a right mess with this wiki, in less than a week or two. So PLEASE follow these guidlines.

When adding a wiki-link to a name (musician, influence, ...), the form should be [[Firstname Lastname]]. When adding a wiki-link to a title (album, book, ...) which starts with an article ("the", "an"), the form should be [[The Title]], NOT [[Title, The]]. Example: [[The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life]]. Same goes for tracks: a wiki-link to a track like "The Dangerous Kitchen" should be listed as [[The Dangerous Kitchen]].

NOTE when categorizing an article for a person: To link an article up to a category, in order to preserve a sensible alphabetical listing on the category page, tagging is like this: [[Category:Musicians|Willis, Ike]]. This will list Ike Willis under the letter W instead of the letter I on the Musicians category page.

Watch out for tracks that have the same name as an album (for instance "The Man From Utopia"). In this case, tag the link to the TRACK as follows: [[The Man From Utopia (The Track)]] (note space and "The Track" between brackets); the album itself can still be linked to as [[The Man From Utopia]].

Similarly to allow default syntax for albums to remain untouched:

for books: [[Them Or Us (The Book)]]

for films: [[200 Motels (The Film)]]

Consistency is key.

Adding/editing articles

Rule of thumb: do a search to see if a page already exists. If it does, edit that page instead of creating your own new page - by using the "edit" link, top left.

Creating a new page: type the name of your page inbetween two square brackets [[Your Page Title Here]] and it will automagically create a link. If the page you linked to already exists, it will show up in blue; if it doesn't exist yet, it'll show up in red. Again: before adding pages, perform a search to check if the page does not already exist.

Helpful hints when trying to format a page:

the Wiki Syntax page provides excellent tips for wiki-syntax and editing. When in doubt, pay it a visit!

have a look at another, already formatted page by clicking that page's "edit" link. It'll show you some of the voodoo used in formatting that page.

The following characters are not allowed in page titles as they will conflict with the way the wiki works:

" # $ * + < > = @ [ ] \ ^ ` { } | ~

Avoid using "smart quotes" (those curly quotes often generated by MS Word) in Page Titles, as they will once again conflict with how the wiki works.

Editing Album pages: Try to format each album page as was done at the Freak Out! page. That means assigning the album page to the "Discography" and "Zappa Per Album" categories like so: [[Category:Discography]] [[Category:Zappa Per Album]] - this will make a box appear at the bottom of the page showing the category it was assigned to. It also means inserting 6 sections:

Release Info (release date, label, etc)

Tracks (track info: title, duration)

Players (the musicians featured on the album)

Background (more information about the circumstances/zeitgeist in which the album was released)

Conceptual Continuity (CC Clues that are hidden within the album)

Versions of the album (original releases vs re-releases)

Don't worry if you can't fill out ALL of this information. Just provide these 6 headers, so that others can add to it later. For instance, you might want to add tracknames, without having a clue as to the players, album background or CC (happens to me all the time, heheh). In that case, just create all the headers, and add your information underneath the "About The Album" header.

Keeping up with article edits

To keep up with changes made to articles, click the "Special:Recentchanges" link in the navigation box. This page will show you who modified what, and for what reason. It's a convenient way to keep up with where any given page is at any given point. Using this page, users can monitor and review the work of other users/contributors, allowing mistakes to be corrected and vandalism to be eliminated.

Users can set preferences to adjust the way that “Recent Changes” looks. The options that affect recent changes are:

Hide minor edits in Recent Changes - this hides all edits that have been marked as “minor”;

Enhanced Recent Changes - with this option enabled, multiple edits (of the same page) are grouped together (this option uses JavaScript, and won't work in every browser);

Number of Recent Changes - you may select the number of changes which will be shown by default on the “Recent Changes” page (once on that page, links are provided for other options).

When editing a page, a contributor has the option of flagging the edit as a "minor edit". This feature is important, because users can choose to hide minor edits in their view of the “Recent Changes” page (as stated above), to keep the volume of edits down to a manageable level. When to use this is somewhat a matter of personal preference. The rule of thumb is that an edit of a page that consists of spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearranging of text should be flagged as a "minor edit".

A "major edit" is basically something that makes the entry worth revisiting for somebody who wants to watch the article rather closely.

Whatever you put in the comment box is the narrative for the change. If you are creating a new page, you don’t have to do anything (the system will mark the page as being “new”). When changing an existing page, give a brief synopsis of the change you have made. This gets announced on the “Recent Changes”, and makes it easier for the rest of us to see what your change is about.

Your IP is logged

Lastly: your IP is logged with every modification you make to any of the pages. I'm sure your intentions are good. If, on the contrary, you consistently prove yourself to be a troll, your IP can and will be banned... but you're not like that, now are you! :)